Prometheus

Enough students have asked me what I thought about Ridley Scott's sort-of-Alien-prequel Prometheus that I finally rented and watched it this last weekend.  Here's my initial, scattered thoughts [this post assumes you've already seen the film]:

The big mystery of course left at the end of the film, as articulated by sole-survivor Dr. Shaw to decapitated-android David, is, "First they created us, then they changed their minds.  I deserve to know why."

Now, there are numerous problems with this film's understanding of biology, linguistics, physics, even consistent plotting, but we won't get into that now.  Instead, I want to focus on this film's themes of unwanted children.


That theme is perhaps best expressed in the infamous "alien abortion" scene, wherein Dr. Shaw uses an automated-medical-chamber to remove an alien-face-hugger from her abdomen, in a sequence that is visceral, grotesque, clautsrophobic, and intense. 

Dr. Shaw had earlier revealed, and lamented, the fact that she's infertile.  But, the news that she is suddenly pregnant instead freaks her out, and she rushes to have the abomination removed.  The first indication for why, perhaps, the Engineers changed their mind about humanity, is implied by the fact that humans, like these aliens, turned out to be something far more grotesque and frightening than the miracle of life that the creators had hoped it would be.

We also get a theme of unwanted children in Vickers and Weyland--the latter is the CEO whom it turns out had snuck himself on board the Prometheus in cryo-freeze in hopes of meeting his maker before he died; the former is the corporate representative on Prometheus who, in a reveal, turns out to be Weyland's daughter.

In a less visceral yet still emotionally-fraught scene, we see that Weyland has, for all intents and purposes, disowned his own daughter.  When I rewatched Prometheus the next day, I noticed how resentful Vickers appears when a hologram of Weyland calls the android David "the closest thing I have to a son."  Weyland had replaced his own creation, his child, with another creation, a robot.

This scene mirrors how the Engineers had apparently decided to replace humans with the xenomorphs of the Alien franchise.  Parents are forsaking and replacing children left and right in this film.

The android David especially complicates the film's themes in intriguing ways--as human-like as he appears, the crew is constantly reminding him that he is not human.  Even his creator, Weyland, straight up says David "lacks a soul"--and yet it is David that swoons with the most affected gazes upon the incredible technology of the Engineers throughout some of the film's most stunningly-gorgeous visuals.  If David can appreciate beauty as the audience can, how then can he be soul-less?  What does the term soul actually mean?

All this is intriguing because it is never quite clear if David is really as robotic as he appears; when David asks Charlie why they created him and he replies "Cause we could I guess," David replies, "Imagine how disappointing it would be to hear your own creator say thus."  When Charlie rejoins, "Well, it's a good thing you can't feel disappointment then, can you,"  David...while not contradicting him...does not exactly agree with him either.  David poisons Charlie shortly thereafter.

The implication, perhaps, is that the Engineers turn on mankind because, as their copies, they perhaps believe we lack souls worth considering...and our resentment at this dismissal may cause us to turn on them.  Freud's castration complex, of the father's fear of being replaced by the son and vice-versa, is on full, predictable display in this film.

The fact that both the ship and the movie are named for the Greek Titan who battled his own children, the Greek Olympians, in order to help their children, mankind, and was thus punished with eternal castration at the hands of the eagles for his trouble--further underlines the themes of fraught parent/child relationships permeating this film.

Also significant is that David is he that first attempts to communicate with the living Engineer.  That is, mankind's own creation speaks to mankind's own creators!

But then the resuscitated Engineer turns on his children and even his children's children, as he kills Weyland, decapitates David, goes on homicidal rampage, and prepares to fly his ship of death to Earth--a scene that mirrors Shaw's own abortion of the alien fetus.

The children, then, turn on their creators, as the Prometheus crashes into and destroys the alien craft; meanwhile, the alien fetus, which survived the abortion, grows far larger and kills the Engineer trying to kill Shaw.  That is, the creation the creator created to kill his first creation instead kills the creator, which in turn creates a second creation that gestates by killing its creator.  It gets complicated.

Yet thankfully, there are also positive parent/child relationships in this film.  Shaw is shown to have had a close relationship with her beloved late-father.  She also remains steadfastly religious (Catholic, specifically) throughout the film, in spite of all that happens--showing her faith and closeness to her heavenly father.

In fact, when her husband Charlie says she can now quit wearing her cross-necklace, since "now we know who actually created us," she rejoins simply with, "and who do you think created them?"  Just as David desires to meet the creators of his creator, so also does Shaw wish to meet the creators of her creators.

The penultimate scene, then, is of Shaw and David hijacking a 2nd alien ship to still seek out the Engineer homeworld.  As they launch into space, she says, "It is new year's day, in The Year of Our Lord, 2094."  She still seeks to meet her makers.

The actual last scene, however, is of the xenomorph from the main Alien franchise being born out the corpse of the dead Engineer.  A life affirming scene is followed by a life-destroying one.  We have a healthy parent/child relationship contrasted against a decidedly unhealthy parent/child relationship.  Decide for yourself what the difference between the two was.